Course Content: Cell Culture Module

The cell culture module is based on a novel industrial process for the production of cancer vaccines, which a local biotechnology company is focusing on. In this process, cancer cells will be cultivated in bioreactors to produce glycoprotein 96 (abbreviated gp96), a member of the heat-shock protein family. Glycoprotein 96 was found to elicit immunity against antigenic peptides from cancerous tumors. As a result, there is much interest in understanding the cell culture process and identifying the major parameters responsible for gp96 production in a controlled environment with the goal to optimize the process. After gp96-containing cells are mass produced in the bioreactor, downstream steps will be implemented to harvest and lyse the cells, and to recover and quantify the gp96 protein.

Two bioreactors will be used in this module: the traditional stirred-tank reactor and the novel Wave (rocking) bioreactor. Students will have the opportunity to study cell growth and product kinetics as well as oxygen mass transfer and their impact on process scale up. They will also explore recovery and purification steps for the target glycoprotein using filtration technology. Powerful analytical instrumentation will be used to monitor biological pathways (e.g. enzyme-based analyzers, optical sensors and HPLC) and to analyze the desired product by quantitative Western blot analysis.